War of the Worlds (2005)

Over a century ago, H. G. Wells gave the world
a new genre of fiction, the alien invasion story, in his novel
The War of the Worlds. In a way, Wells’s creative
situation mirrored that of his aliens, first-time colonizers
taking an unprecedented step in setting out to conquer a new
world.

Moral/Spiritual Value

Age Appropriateness

MPAA Rating

Caveat Spectator

Five decades later, director Byron Haskin, who helmed the
first cinematic adaptation of Wells’s classic story in 1953, was
in a somewhat similar position. At least, alien invasion cinema
was still basically new territory, though Haskin didn’t exactly
invent the genre. A number of similarly themed films were
released that same year; a few may even have preceded it by a
year or so. (If there were any alien invasion films prior to the
1950s, I don’t know what they were.)

In his new rendition of War of the Worlds, both Steven
Spielberg and his alien invaders are in a very different
position. In this War of the Worlds, it turns out that the
aliens aren’t coming to Earth blind. The groundwork for their
invasion was laid long ago, by previous generations of aliens who
first came to Earth and planted their deadly tripods below the
planet’s surface, to await the day when they would return to
conquer the Earth.

Similarly, Spielberg himself isn’t approaching this premise
blind. By now the territory has been well explored, the
possibilities of Wells’s premise extensively hashed out, by
generations of storytellers of varying levels of creative skill
as well as scientific and military insight.

Novels like Footfall, Ender’s Game and The
Forge of God have probed the theoretical possibilities with
the penetrating speculation of a Tom Clancy thriller; if aliens
ever really did invade, such novels might well wind up looking as
prescient as the fiery climax of Debt of Honor looked on
September 11, 2001. (Alternatively, a real alien attack might
take a form no one could possibly have guessed.)

On the screen, stories like Invasion of the Body
Snatchers and the TV miniseries "V" offered thoughtful takes
on the premise. A 1996 film called The Arrival provided
one of the smarter cinematic variations, though it was dwarfed
that year by the silly popcorn actioner Independence Day.
More recently, M. Night Shymalan’s Signs explored the spirituality of alien
invasion — though its aliens seemed woefully ill-equipped for the
conquest into which they had expended so much effort, and were
undone by a preposterous vulnerability that elicited groans of
disbelief rather than cheers.

Now, with the new War of the Worlds, it’s amazing how
far the aliens haven’t come. Spatially, of course, they’re coming
much farther than before; Mars is no longer a credible homeworld
for invading aliens, so Spielberg’s attackers have presumably
crossed intersteller distances to get to Earth. Technologically,
too, the invaders’ weapons are as far beyond those of Haskin’s
film as the cutting-edge special effects of today are beyond
those of 1953.

Yet the alien invasion makes less sense in this retelling, as
does their undoing, though it is the same as in previous versions
of the story. As with Shyamalan’s aliens in Signs, it
doesn’t make sense that these aliens would be so unprepared for
what becomes their downfall. After all, unlike their counterparts
in previous versions, these invaders have been to Earth before,
perhaps a million years ago or even more.

Think about what this means. For hundreds of millennia, these
beings have possessed intersteller travel, not to mention serious
planet-conquering military hardware. They’ve had the will and the
capability to bring heavy-duty weaponry to other planets in
preparation for a conquest far in the future. And now, hundreds
of millennia later, they still have the will and the know-how to
come here and use it.

Clearly, interplanetary conquest is an immutable part of who
these aliens are and what they do. How many other planets must
they have visited, explored, conquered since first visiting our
planet, or even before? Surely there can be very little about the
potential pitfalls and hazards of this kind of work that they
don’t know. To be that advanced for that long, to put in that
much preparation and time, and then to make a mistake that basic,
is more than a plot glitch. It’s a fundamental flaw that all but
defies suspension of disbelief.

Why would the aliens even go to all that effort in the first
place? How do they benefit? Why not just wait to ship the tripods
here until they’re actually ready to invade? What’s the advantage
of having them here in advance instead of doing it all in one
shot? Suppose in the past century or two we had happened to
discover their tripods and somehow disable them or even learn to
use them? Or suppose we had blown ourselves, the tripods, and the
rest of the planet into oblivion? Then what good would all that
elaborate preparation be?

What do the aliens even want? Earth itself? It was theirs for
the taking a million years ago; why not just take it then and
there? Why bring high-tech weapons to a no-tech planet, then wait
around a million years for the natives to develop technology so
you need your technology to defeat them? Was it us they wanted?
For what? For food? Slaves? Lab rats? How could we possibly be
worth all that effort to them?

Perhaps none of these questions would matter if the aliens’
behavior provided the basis for some sort of insightful character
drama, shrewd observations about human nature, or at least clever
plot twists. But it doesn’t.

That’s not to say the film is boring or uninvolving — far from
it. Spielberg is far too accomplished a director to make a really
bad movie. He knows how to keep viewers on the edge of their
seats, how to play their nerves and emotions like fiddle strings,
how to subordinate the most incredible special effects to the
narrative so that they feel to viewers like real events, not
impressive technical achievements.

Under his efficient, assured direction, this War of the
Worlds is consistently gripping, even riveting excitement.
Yet it’s rather grim, joyless excitement, and not very satisfying
in the end. Other than sheer spectacle, the film is about little
more than the experience of desperation and flight in the face of
unimaginable crisis.

That Spielberg dresses this up in the trappings of 9/11
imagery — the missing-persons displays, the dust-covered
survivors — gives the film some topical cache, but there’s no
commentary or catharsis here. Batman Begins, a far better summer
film, also played (far more subtly) with 9/11 themes, but at
least there the conflict was about something — the bad
guys had motives, the hero fought for a principle, and the
resolution was earned, not unconvincing or arbitrary. (I don’t
mean the obligatory finale from Wells’s book. This War of the
Worlds has three "climaxes," one unconvincing, one
obligatory, and one arbitrary.)

How do human beings respond to extreme crises? War of the
Worlds doesn’t slow down to ask. There’s lots of running
around and screaming, a few instances of mob ugliness and general
human selfishness, and at least one crackpot. But in real life
there’s another side to this coin: Crises bring out the best in
humanity as well as the worst. Unfortunately, like James
Cameron’s Titanic, Spielberg’s film only highlights the
ugly side of human nature under pressure, without managing to
celebrate the capacity of ordinary human beings in crisis to put
others first and even risk their lives to aid strangers. (There
is one brief scene in which a pair of strangers show concern for
a seemingly abandoned child — but their efforts, though
well-meaning, are misguided, undercutting even this minor moment
of uplift. A later scene of cooperation among strangers, coming
as it does at a moment when no one has anything to lose, doesn’t
quite count either.)

Nor is there any room in this relentless story for any
spiritual searching or reflection, another ubiquitous dimension
of human response to crises. The aftermath of 9/11 also included
overflowing churches and synagogues, but that’s one 9/11 image
War of the Worlds has no interest in exploring. (Instead,
in the violent manifestations before the first tripod appears,
someone cracks that God is angry at the neighborhood — and then
the first building demolished by the first tripod is a church. At
least the crackpot isn’t a religious nut here, as he is in the
book.)

I see I’ve gotten almost all the way through this review
without mentioning that the film stars Tom Cruise as an
irresponsible, working-class divorcé and deadbeat dad, and
Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin as his rather disaffected
children, Rachel and Robbie.

Well, there’s not much to tell. Ray (Cruise) is the kind of
ex-husband that any responsible ex-wife, such as Miranda Otto,
would dread leaving her children with every other weekend — the
kind of guy who would have only peanut butter and tabasco sauce
in the fridge when the kids show up for their weekend with dad,
and who invites his 10-year-old daughter to order out for herself
while he takes a nap, leaving her in the care of her older
brother Robbie, who’s likely as not to take the car and ditch his
sister.

Robbie is such a self-centered jerk that even though he
repeatedly accuses his dad of not caring about him or little
Rachel and only wanting to ditch them with their mother, and even
though Rachel has desperately begged her big brother to stay with
her and take care of her during the alien invasion, Robbie is
determined to abandon his sister with their father and go off on
his own to try to help the armed forces take on the enemy.

I understand why Spielberg wishes to tell his story through
the eyes of a few particular characters — just not why he chose
these particular characters, who are neither particularly
interesting, sympathetic, or important.

The film has taken lumps from critics over the "happy" coda, a
character-centered denouement that I found not so much calculated
or manipulative as pointless; I would have had to care about the
characters more to feel manipulated. Personally, I was more
bothered by the improbable, dissonant heroics of the de
facto dramatic climax, as opposed to the obligatory narrative
climax.

Yet, in spite of the failure of the whole, Spielberg makes the
parts work so well that War of the Worlds is almost worth
it. Individual set pieces are riveting, and one seldom doubts
that if alien tripods were actually wreaking havoc on the Earth,
this is indeed very much what it would be like. Afterwards,
though, one is left with little more than ashes.